While EU Commissioners were announcing that the EU Birds and Habitats & Species Directives were safe (here), the nations of the world are also meeting in Mexico to discuss progress on meeting their international commitments to halt the loss of biodiversity. My colleagues, Sarah Nelson and Georgina Chandler, are in Cancun to encourage leaders to increase ambition and action. Here, they share the findings of a new report that assesses progress in meeting international commitments for nature. The report also includes five simple recommendations for all governments, including our own, to help them do better for nature. I hope and expect Defra will reflect these global ambitions in their soon to be published 25 Year Plan for the Environment.
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In 2010, the world agreed to a bold and ambitious agenda to address the decline in global biodiversity. The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets set out challenges for the global community to meet by 2020.
This week marks the start of the 13th Conference of the Parties to the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD COP13). These meetings happen once every two years, bringing together countries from around the world to discuss actions to reverse the declines in global biodiversity, as well as how well countries are progressing upon their commitments.
Gola rainforest in Sierra Leone - part of BirdLife International's Forest of Hope programme (Guy Shorrock, rspb-images.com)
Concerned by the continuing loss of global biodiversity, the RSPB partnered with four of the biggest global conservation organisations (our own Birdlife International network, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and WWF) to produce an assessment to highlight how well countries were progressing against the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.
The study is based on analysis of the CBD Secretariat, drawing on the 52% of countries who have submitted their national biodiversity strategy and action plans,. Our assessment then used this data to examine two things:
Although the data meant that analysis at the national level was not possible, the results could be used to show alignment and progress by target, by economic grouping and by political groupings.
The results are sobering. Only 5 percent of countries who have reported progress on the Aichi Biodiversity Targets are on track to reach their global biodiversity goals by 2020. With a massive 90% of countries who have reported setting national targets that are lower than the global ambition.
Examining alignment and progress of national targets by economic groups was particularly revealing, showing that low-income countries have set more ambitious targets than higher-income countries, despite making less progress. The same picture emerged when analysing the data by political groups, which showed that groupings with a higher proportion of developed countries, in particular the EU, showed less alignment with the scope and ambition of the Aichi Targets than other groupings with a higher proportion of developing countries, such as the African Group.
With four years left to meet the Aichi Targets, the message to countries is clear; continue as you are, and for the second time in a decade, you will fail to meet your commitments to safeguarding biodiversity. This week at CBD COP13 we will therefore be calling on all countries to:
The RSPB, working with, and through, the Birdlife Partnership will be playing its role to support countries with these recommendations, in the hope that when 2020 comes – we can say that we did our best to ensure we did not fail to save our nature.
For more information on this work, visit www.birdlife.org/aichi-progress